INDIANAPOLIS — As Chuck Pagano surveys the NFL scouting combine for the first time as an NFL head coach, the Fairview High School graduate has already shown plenty of fire, that he’s not afraid of a challenge.

The Colts have the No. 1 pick in the April draft, and most folks in the NFL consider it a formality that they will take Stanford quarterback Andrew Luck with the pick as they begin to mold themselves from a team built around Peyton Manning to something else.

That something else is both the challenge and Pagano’s vision of what he’d like his team to be. It will have significant impact on the kinds of players the Colts pursue in the draft, as well as in free agency. It will be no small makeover from what the people who have filled the seats at Indianapolis’ home games since Manning’s rookie year in 1998 are used to seeing.

The Manning Colts were built on speed on both sides of the ball. Built to throw first, with precision and timing.

Pagano sees the future a little differently.

“What they’ve done here in the past was very, very successful,” Pagano said Thursday at Lucas Oil Field. “It’s a formula and a system that has proved to win a championship, win a Super Bowl. There’s other ways to do things, obviously.”

And those “other ways” are now in play with Luck set to join a team with the intention of protecting him from as many bumps on the learning curve as possible.

TheNFL is filled with stories of young quarterbacks tossed into the fray early in their careers who were bludgeoned by opposing defenses because their rebuilding teams weren’t ready for them to play, even if the quarterbacks might have been. Thursday, Pagano referenced both his father — long-time Fairview head coach Sam Pagano — as well as his time with the Oakland Raiders as an assistant coach in what kind of team he would like to assemble.

“One thing I learned from Mr. Davis, after spending some time in Oakland, it’s a big-man’s game,” Pagano said. “That doesn’t discount having little fast guys. You’ve got to have a good mixture of them.”

Asked what specifically that would mean to an offense that has been among the most pass-first affairs in the league, and Pagano said:

“You watch the Steelers play, haven’t you? I’ve always said this and I learned this from my dad growing up, you’ve got to run the football and you’ve got to stop the run to be successful, at any level.

“We want to be explosive, we want to be physical, we want to be tough, we want to dominate the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball.”

That means Pagano has plenty of work to do to both mold the roster that way as well as be the face of a franchise set to embark on historic change, moving on from one of its greatest players.

A player whose 15-foot portrait — in the shotgun, ready to pass, no less — was not five steps from where Pagano spoke of the new day Thursday.

It means when the Colts make their picks in April, power will be on the agenda, especially up front in the offensive line. Where the Colts have been relatively small up front, they will now have a far different profile — a team once again built around its quarterback, except this time the guy’s name will be Andrew.

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